ECE 3077, Fall 2017

Homework #1
Due Thursday August 31, beginning of lecture

1. Using your class notes, prepare a 1-2 paragraph summary of what we talked about
in class in the last week. I do not want just a bulleted list of topics, I want you to
use complete sentences and establish context (Why is what we have learned relevant?
How does it connect with other things you have learned here or in other classes?).
The more insight you give, the better.

2. The theory of probability relies only on Kolmogorovs three axioms: a probability law
P on a sample space must obey

(i) P (A) 0 for any event A (i.e., for any subset A of the possible outcomes ).
(ii) If A and B are disjoint events, meaning AB = , then P (AB) = P (A)+P (B).
(iii) P () = 1.

From these, we can derive any number of properties of P . Here are four examples
(some of which are also given in the notes):

(iv) If A B, then P (A) P (B).

(v) P (A B) = P (A) + P (B) P (A B) for all events A and B.
(vi) P (A B) P (A) + P (B) for all events A and B.
(vii) P (Ac ) = 1 P (A).

For example, to establish (iv) we can write B as1

B = (B A) (B Ac ) = A (B Ac )

where the last equality follows from the fact that A B. Then using the axioms

P (B) = P (A (B Ac )) = P (A) + P (B Ac ) (since A and B Ac are disjoint)

P (A) (since P (B Ac ) 0).

You dont need to turn this in, but take a moment to derive (v), (vi) and (vii) yourself.

(a) Let A and B be arbitrary events. Suppose we know that P (A B) = 2/3,

P (A B) = 1/12, and P (B Ac ) = 1/3. What is P (A B c )?
(b) Out of the students in this class, 60% can attend my office hours if I hold them
on Wednesday morning, 75% can attend them on Wednesday afternoon, and
40% can attend either time. What is the probability that a randomly selected
student will not be able to attend my office hours?
1
If you are having trouble visualizing this, draw a Venn diagram with A as a subset of B, then clearly
label the region corresponding to A and B Ac .

1
 (c) True or False: the following statements are consistent:
the chance it rains on Saturday is 50%
the chance it rains on Sunday is 70%
the chance it rains on both Saturday AND Sunday is 15%
Justify your answer.

3. In your circuit kit, the devices labeled 1 pF capacitors actually consist of capacitors
that are 0.99 pF, 1pF and 1.01 pF. When you reach into the kit to build your circuit,
the probability you pull out a capacitor with capacitance C 1pF is 0.6, while the
probability you out one with C 1 pF is 0.85. What is the probability that the
capacitor you pull does not have C = 1 pF and you will have to spend all night in
the lab debugging your circuit?
4. Suppose that a point (x, y) is chosen from the unit square S = [0, 1] [0, 1] using the
uniform probability law the probability that (x, y) is in a subset A of S is equal to
the area of A:
P ((x, y) A) = area(A) for all A S.
(a) What is the probability that x + y 1/3 ?
(b) What is the probability that x + y 3/2 ?
(c) Find an algebraic expression F (u) for
F (u) = P (x + y u) .

5. Two presidential candidates, generically labeled D (for Democrat) and R (for Repub-
lican), are in a heated election battle. A U.S. presidential election can be broken down
into 50 separate subelections, one for each state, and the winner of each subelection is
awarded a certain number of points (i.e., electoral votes, the number of which can vary
from contest to contest). There are 538 total points available, and so accumulating
270 or more will win the election. We will assume2 that the outcome of a subelection
in one state does not affect the outcome of the others (i.e., the subelections in each
state are independent).
Suppose that 43 of the 50 contests have already been more or less decided, and the
score is D 244, R 173. Seven contests remain for the final 121 points. Here is a
breakdown which includes how many points each of the remaining contests is worth,
along with the probability that each player wins that contest3 :
state points P (D wins) P (R wins)
FL 29 0.76 0.24
PA 20 0.82 0.18
OH 18 0.74 0.26
GA 16 0.45 0.55
NC 15 0.66 0.34
VA 13 0.88 0.12
MN 10 0.85 0.15
2
This assumption generally does not hold in practice, but nonetheless, these results can be instructive.
3
This is actually not too far from what the 2016 election looked like in fall of 2016. See http://projects.
fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

2
 (a) There are 27 = 128 different win/loss combinations for these last 7 contests.
Which ones result in R being elected?
(b) What is the probability that R is elected?

6. In MATLAB, the command rand generates a single random number on [0, 1] according
to the uniform law. Try it. The command rand(m,1) generates a column vector of
length m where each entry is generated independently according to the uniform law.
Try it with m = 37.
If we set x = (rand < .32), the variable x will be either 0 (if the random number is
greater than 0.32) or 1 (if the random number is less than .32). It shouldnt be hard
to see that x = 1 with probability 0.32 and x = 0 with probability 0.68. Similarly, x
= (rand(37,1) < .32) will create a vector of 37 variables, each of which is 1 or 0
with probability 0.32 or 0.68, respectively. It should be clear how to generalize this
to vector lengths other than 37 and probabilities other than 0.32.
So if I tell you that basketball player Dwight is a 45% free throw shooter, you can
simulate a sequence of 100 free throws with

FT = (rand(100,1) < .45);

The entry FT(k) will be 1 if Dwight made free throw number k, and 0 if he missed.
The result of sum(FT) will tell you the total number of free throws out of the 100
that Dwight made.

(a) Write a MATLAB function free throws.m that takes a probability p and a
positive integer N and returns a simulated sequence of free throws of length N ,
with a probability of success p.
(b) Use your function to estimate the probability that Dwight makes at least 5 of
his next 10 free throws. This will require you running it many times (say at least
10, 000) and collecting the results in a smart way.
(c) Use your script to estimate the probability that Dwight makes at least 50 of his
next 100 free throws.
(d) Use your script to estimate the probability that Dwight makes at least 500 of
his next 1000 free throws.

Turn in all of your code, along with your answers to (b)(d).